Lady-Links: How Your Community Can Benefit by Duplicating our Program

We have great news to share!  Another retirement community is duplicating our Lady-Links program.  A resident from there visited us to see how Lady-Links works.  She felt her community would benefit from our model of making friendship visits to residents with dementia. After her visit here, she presented an overview of our program to her administrators and got approval to use it.  We are thrilled to see Lady-Links duplicated.  They will make some modifications to fit their specific community, but the basic idea remains the same….friends visiting friends in various stages of cognitive decline, engaging them in activities they enjoy.

Our ideas for how we plan and organize our visits can be found on this website.  We hope you will scroll back through past posts to get more information and consider starting your own version of Lady-Links.  Here are some ways our program can be used:

• This model of friendship care visits can be used with men who have dementia; just change some of the activities to those that appeal to men and call it Buddy-Links.
• The people visiting a friend with cognitive issues can be both men and women; just change the name to Lasting-Links.
• A family might want to use this model to organize the grandkids, great-nieces and great-nephews to visit an elderly family member; just change the name to Little-Links.
• A church can easily apply this model for serving its members.
• The Lady-Links model has worked with our friends who are diagnosed with various types of dementia. It is our opinion that their communication skills and social skills have improved since our visits began (within the context of their disease).

The key to starting your own version of Lady-Links is to find a group of friends/relatives/community members willing to make regularly scheduled visits, then

• –Identify someone to select activities and projects to be used at each visit.
• –Identify someone to keep the group updated and informed.
• –Recruit members from the medical, pastoral, and social services fields to serve as your support team to offer insight and advice
• –Ask for training from your state or local associations on how to communicate with those who have cognitive issues.
• –Set a schedule for the visits.
• –Begin the visits.

Before long, you’ll see results as the socialization makes a great difference in the lives of those dear friends you visit.

The dear friend’s life will be enriched in areas of self-esteem, communication, social interaction.  The dear friend’s family benefits from knowing that someone cares about their loved one and is helping to prevent isolation and withdrawal.  The Lady-Links themselves benefit from new friendships and seeing the obvious results of their time spent.  It is a win-win situation for everyone.

Our idea is simple and there is nothing to buy.  This website is a great resource for you to use to get a Lady-Links type program started.  Hope you will share what you’re doing and let us know how Lady-Links has been an inspiration to your program.

Lady-Links:  Enriching the Lives of Others through Love and Laughter